Intellectual Idolatry

Since the arrival of the “New Atheists” secularism has become the only intellectually viable option in the minds of the majority of Westerners. Anti-God, pseudo-philosophical rhetoric and pseudo-science have been shamelessly promoted as fact in a sustained propaganda campaign designed to destroy any vestiges of Christianity in the West.

The New Atheists, promoted unquestioningly by secularist media, have managed to deceive the Western world into believing that there is no intellectual justification for believing the Bible’s teachings are true.

Worse still, they have so slandered and maligned the God of the Bible that even if the evidence proved God’s existence, any “half-decent” human being would be morally culpable for serving and worshiping Him.

Intellectual Idleness: A Modern Malaise

The sad indictment of our often decadent and overindulged Western lives is that we have neither the time nor the inclination to question the all-pervasive secular narrative. We are generally too busy watching our favourite sport or TV show to think in any serious way about whether atheist denials of God are scientifically and morally justified by the evidence.

The tragic reality for us in the West is that we have been far too quick to place our trust in the hands of fallible, fallen men with an overtly anti-God agenda rather than to humble ourselves, admit our almost infinite ignorance of the cosmos, and trust in the Word of our Creator.

Just as God-Incarnate tells us that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35) so these fallible, fallen men, demand their word be viewed with the same authority. Using every means at their disposal they slander the name of God, twisting biblical narratives, history and science to weave a canvas that has the chief oponent to their own deity – the actual God, as a logically impossible, hateful, intolerant, and even “genocidal” tyrant.

Human misunderstandings and ignorance are dressed up as logical impossibility and God’s moral judgements are evaluated according to majority preference. The love of God demonstrated on the cross, is ignored or denied entirely whilst God’s punishment of sin is deemed unjust or tyrannical according to the secular narrative.

The same accusers of God, who refuse to accept the payment for their sin offered at the cross – denying their sinfulness and Jesus’ historicity, accuse God of immorality and evil when He judges the sin of those who refuse to accept Christ’s gift of forgiveness.

“How could a loving God send anyone to Hell” they complain, wilfully oblivious to the fact that God has invited everyone to heaven through Christ. Those who end up in Hell are those who refuse God’s way (John 14:6).

Humanistic ambition coupled with delusions of grandeur undergirds the secular humanist onslaught and the general public has been so dumbed down by secular education that they cannot see through the lies. Apathetic Christians who should have been diligently studying (2 Timothy 2:15) to counter such heinous misrepresentations of our God and Father are too busy waiting for the next episode of their favourite TV show to perorm their role as “salt and light” to the culture (Matthew 5:13-16).

Humanistic Idolatry: Trust God Not Man

“And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. -John 3:19-21

Contrary to popular belief the secular slander of God is not based on facts and evidence but on fallen man’s sinful desire to glorify himself rather than God. This glorification of man over God is the central tenet of secular humanism which is so prevalent among the ruling elites of our day.

Too many Christians have developed an idolatrous view of worldly wisdom, falsely believing that atheist experts are honestly seeking truth. Secular government and media have saturated our culture with the idea that the experts reject Christianity in favour of atheism because they have impartially investigated all the evidence and the only reasonable conclusion is atheism.

“The Bible makes it very clear that those who hate God, hate truth and flee from it.” (Romans 8:7, James 4:4, John 14:6)

The implication of the Bible’s teachings about fallen man’s hatred of truth is that whenever the evidence points in the direction of theism over atheism, truth is not the goal of atheist experts.

They may do very well on subjects that have no relation to the big questions in life such as how to make an iphone that only needs one charge per day but a conflict of interest arises when their field of expertise intersects with their atheistic faith. Whenever the presuppositions of their naturalistic worldview are challenged by the evidence their atheistic faith renders them less than useful.

In truth, there is nothing more dangerous than a group of experts with a preconceived set of beliefs that they will not allow the evidence to challenge. It is naive to believe anyone truly impartial. Everybody already knows that Christian experts have a bias, the very well-hidden secret of secularism is that atheists are equally, if not more biased.

Atheist Cosmologists Will Not Allow A Designer Regardless of The Evidence

Atheist Cosmologists do not promote the Big Bang over Creationism because of the overwhelming evidence against Creationism, but rather because they have excluded any non-naturalistic cause (God) of the universe before the evidence is even considered because they are atheists!

This a priori method of “inquiry” makes a mockery of their expertise and invalidates any intellectual authority said expertise may have afforded. The result of atheist hatred of truth is a mockery of true scientific endeavour.

Even the non-experts can see that by excluding a non-physical (theistic) beginning to the universe atheists leave themselves with the patently absurd options of “In the beginning there was nothing and then nothing exploded creating everything” or the equally ridiculous idea that the universe created itself.

The situation is equally dire in other fields of study that touch upon life’s big questions. We mistakenly believe our self-appointed superiors in government, Hollywood and the BBC to be impartial when they overtly claim to be secularists. They tell us that the science is settled on the key worldview issues of our day and we Christians just buy it. We can’t even be bothered to check out the veracity of their claims (Acts 17:11) we just surrender without a fight.

Capitalism, socialism, democracy, tyranny, Evolution, climate change, gender identity and the homosexual gene are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the manipulation of expert authority to further the secular agenda. Any dissent from the secular line on these issues is swiftly punished with at a minimum ridicule and often with fines and imprisonment.

Atheist Historians Will Not Allow Miracles Regardless of the Evidence

Atheist historians develop totally new standards of proof when they are dealing with evidence that points towards Jesus and the veracity of the claims of Christianity.

The fact is the claims of Christianity have more evidence supporting their historicity than most other past events that the same atheist historians treat as undeniable historical fact.

There is more manuscript evidence that Jesus Christ existed than there is evidence that the Roman Emperor of the time existed, yet many atheist experts still deny that Jesus was an actual historical person.

Laypeople are tricked into believing that atheist experts have actual evidence for their denials of the biblical accounts when in reality they have nothing but rhetoric, bias and bad philosophy to support their anti-theistic worldview.

We assume late dates of authorship for NT books and prophetic OT books such as Daniel and Isaiah because atheist experts assure us the evidence demands it.

The majority of Christians and almost all non-Christian laypeople just accept that a fair investigation has been carried out to reach this conclusion. In reality the atheist’s best “evidence” for the late authorship of biblical books is actually just fallacious philosophical reasoning, not real evidence.

Since God Doesn’t Exist God Could Not Have Raised Jesus From the Dead

Expert atheists reason that since men do not rise from the dead and miracles are impossible Christianity is a myth.

Since Christianity cannot be true, any historical evidence or eye-witness testimony that supports the claims of Christianity must be fabricated and thus mythological.

Myths develop after all of the eye witnesses to the foundational event are no longer around to corroborate or deny embellishments and fabrications. As such, the NT accounts must have been written hundreds of years after the events they describe.

Since the NT was written hundreds of years after the event the Apostles could not have been the real authors of the books of the NT. Furthermore since actual eye-witnesses do not willingly die testifying to an event they know they made up the NT cannot have been written by eye-witnesses.

Hopefully it does not take a Ph.D. to realise that the circular reasoning described above does not constitute what most people would expect from experts to whom they have given their trust.

The expert authority of atheists is nullified by their hatred of God.

When an atheist pronounces against God, regardless of his area and level of expertise his comments cannot be taken as true just because of his expertise.

The Bible makes it clear that his “enmity with God” will overrule his intellectual expertise.

Secular Evangelism

The government, including government sponsored education and media (BBC) has been gradually infiltrated and converted to the postmodern religion of secular humanism. In true Gramscian-Marxist style all of the above-mentioned institutions have been co-opted from their Christian origins and purposes, to become bastions of secular propaganda.

Truth and fiction are determined by the appropriate secular-appointed experts. The government-sanctioned experts are not appointed based on their intellect but rather on how well they conform to the secular narrative (political correctness).

As Christians we cannot let secular lies masquerading as “expertise” go unanswered. It is our moral duty “to demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

We must not let the self-serving narratives of those who hate God determine what people believe about reality and we must certainly not believe their pronouncements without serious scepticism ourselves.

It is idolatry to blindly accept the pronouncements of atheist “experts” when their pronouncements undermine God and His Word.

Sadly many Christians have so bought into the secular narrative that they are willing to invent intricate hermeneutics to make God agree with the atheists over HIS-story. Rather than question the atheistic assumptions of atheistic scientists they would rather question the eternal words of the almighty God (Isaiah 40:8).

“Did God really say…” (Genesis 3:1) is the favoured hermeneutic of those who have sold out to the secular narrative, a hermeneutic which ironically Satan himself also favours.

Christians cannot allow ourselves to adopt the hedonistic mentality of the culture in which we live. We must not waste our fleeting time in this world indulging the flesh with the latest mindless entertainment. We have a higher calling as ambassadors of the most High God.

It is the responsibility of the Church to train up experts in every field of study so that Christians can always have an intellectually defensible response to all those who would seek to undermine God with “cleverly devised fables” (2 Peter 1:16, 1 Peter 3:15).